CARSON CITY — Marijuana’s useful cousin hemp could soon be sprouting on test plots in Nevada after a legislative subcommittee gave final approval Thursday to regulations overseeing the pilot project.

Robert Little, plant division administrator at the Nevada Department of Agriculture, said the agency already has received a handful of applications to grow the plant and anticipates receiving around 20.

The regulations require a $500 application fee to cover the administrative costs of overseeing the project, Little said. Additionally, the department will charge $1 for every pound of seed purchased, as well as $1 per acre to pay for pre-harvest inspections.

Denver-based O.penVAPE licenses products and manufacturing services in the medical and adult-use cannabis industry. Through its network of licensees in nine states and Jamaica, it is the largest extractor of cannabis oil in the United States.

Demetri Kouretas, CEO of TGIG, said its valuable relationship with O.penVAPE will make it possible for patients to obtain cannabis oil processed through CO2 extraction, a pure and safer form of cannabis oil. His company has begun wholesaling O.penVAPE products to current operating dispensaries and plans to make O.penVAPE products available to all of southern Nevada’s 48 dispensaries by the end of the year.

“Employing the science and technology that O.penVAPE has perfected, we are manufacturing superior cannabis oil for customers who have been requesting a way to ingest cannabis in safer measured doses,” Kouretas said. “We researched partnerships with other manufacturers and selected O.penVAPE because we share with O.penVAPE’s leaders similar views about access to medical cannabis. We simply got along well.”

Chris Driessen, Chief Business Development Officer of O.penVAPE, said TGIG is one of two Nevada enterprises that have entered into licensee agreements with O.penVAPE. TGIG holds four Nevada state licenses, making it possible for them to cultivate cannabis, produce O.penVAPE cannabis oil, and distribute and sell cannabis flower and O.penVAPE products. Per Nevada law, TGIG’s license covers the southern portion of the state, which includes the cities of Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, Henderson, Mesquite, Laughlin and Clark and Nye counties.

A city that is world famous for its late night lifestyles, fine dining, lavish resorts, and for being the epicenter of legal gambling, Las Vegas, Nevada is finally forging ahead with its long overdue medical marijuana program. Although voters in Nevada approved medical marijuana in 2000, it has taken more than 15 years for the state and local cities to implement regulations to allow commercial cultivation and dispensaries. In the past year and a half, 60 licenses have been issued and more than a dozen grow facilities, processing centers and dispensaries have opened for business across Nevada, with several in the Las Vegas metropolitan area. Being a desert oasis nicknamed ‘Sin City’ for its rather liberal approaches to gambling and adult entertainment, Las Vegas is a fitting location for cannabis culture to thrive, and an obviously lucrative marketplace for an array of canna-business. Many industry insiders and analysists predict the Nevada marijuana market, post recreational legalization, could be worth upward of $100 million dollars per year.

One unique factor sets Nevada, and Las Vegas in particular, aside from any other medical marijuana market; the state provides reciprocity to qualified patients from ANY legal medical marijuana state, with CBD-only states as an exception. Patients from Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, or any other state with a regulated medical marijuana program may show their patient registration card (or certificate) and a valid government-issued ID to dispensary staff, and be able to purchase legal flower, vaporizers, concentrates and/or edibles. While no dispensary is open on the strip because of zoning laws, there are a few stores nearby and a handful of others spread throughout the valley who are eager to provide Las Vegas’ 40 million + annual visitors with an alternative enjoyment and means of relaxation in a city that is otherwise quite busy and sometimes overwhelming. To date, no other state is offering reciprocity for non-resident medical marijuana patients.

RENO, Nev. (MyNews4.com & KRNV) — “It is nothing more than a pot candy shop out there that is available to anyone who wants it.” Jerry Mager and his wife, Illona, want to see stricter regulations of medical marijuana.

“Anybody who wants to get a card for any reason can obtain one,” Jerry said. “It’s not medication.”

The couple lost their son 20 years ago in a car crash. They say the driver was under the influence of marijuana. Since his death, they’ve become strong anti-marijuana advocates.

“We want to eliminate it from the state and we’re starting with the county,” he said. They have fought bills at the state legislature level before. Now, the Magers are lobbying for Washoe County dispensaries to be shut down.

Jerry and Illona think cannabis should be approved by the FDA before people can use it as a medication. “I think that this should go through the FDA,” retired nurse, Illona said. “There should be the required trials and extensive research that the FDA provides.”

Jerry said he believes the legalization of medical marijuana should be a federal issue. “The legislature has no right to declare anything a medication. That’s up to the FDA.”

Both believe Nevada’s current medical marijuana program is not safe. Jerry said it is no stricter than recreational legalization.

“What’s going on with medical marijuana is no regulation of that type at all,” he said. “You see the doctor once a year. You use as much as you want every day.” The Magers are concerned about a patient being able to control the amount of THC they consume. “There’s no dosage requirement.”

“There’s a variety of strains that can benefit people for different needs,” Eva Losey-Grossman said. “You can ask us all about it. Just come in the store and the bud tenders are very knowledgeable.”

Losey-Grossman is the manager of Sierra Wellness Connection in Reno. She said the dispensary offers dozens of strains of cannabis, with different levels of THC.

“We are laboratory tested by an independent, state certified laboratory.” Losey-Grossman said the products sold at Sierra Wellness Connection are safe.

The executive director of the Nevada Medical Marijuana Association weighed in as well. “Our lab testing standards are the highest in the country,” Will Adler said. “You know you’re putting a safe product in your body. Not a mystery bag of green things you buy off the street.”

With further regulation after medical marijuana was legalized came new strains. Many of those strains are designed to specifically target certain ailments.

“Because of this, you can have a product that’s being developed and hybridized and created through studies,” Joetta Macillus said. Macillus is battling stage four breast cancer. She uses medical marijuana to cope with her pain. “So you’re getting not just something that’s growing on the side of the road basically. You’re getting a real medicine.”

In part three of this series, you’ll hear more of Joetta Macillus’s story. She claims marijuana has changed her life. You can watch part three on Wednesday, December 2 at 6 p.m.

Former Las Vegas Outlaws quarterback Ryan Clement, center, is shown with wife, Ann, and children, from left, Lane, Holland and Caralie. Clement said he had to do a lot of soul-searching about what effect becoming a lobbyist for the marijuana industry would have on his family before deciding to do it. Courtesy, Ryan Clement

By Ron Kantowski
Las Vegas Review-Journal

It was February 2001, the Las Vegas Outlaws vs. the Memphis Maniax, the XFL on UPN.

Surely you remember the XFL.

The public address announcer came on the air saying he couldn’t wait to see the Maniax cheerleaders in wet T-shirts.

On the first play from scrimmage, “He Hate Me” — a.k.a, Rod Smart, one of seven XFLers who would play in the Super Bowl — broke off a nice run for the Outlaws. Ryan Clement, the Las Vegas quarterback, passed 38 yards to Todd Floyd, a former UNLV wideout.

The next time the Outlaws had the ball, Shante Carver, formerly of Arizona State and the Dallas Cowboys, put a maniacal hit on Clement.

“You could hear that thing separate,” said one of the announcers with glee.

Instead of trotting off the field, Clement sprinted to the Memphis huddle — clutching his separated shoulder all the while — and got into Shante Carver’s facemask.

Now do you remember the XFL?

The pain was unbearable.

So now Ryan Clement is a lobbyist, and an advocate, for legalizing marijuana.

He said if you’re a quarterback with a badly separated shoulder, and the morphine has you hooked like a bass on the end of Bill Dance’s fishing line, you might want to give it a try.

Just don’t let NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s gumshoes catch you.

“A lot of my friends in college who had gone on to play in the pros talked about their pain management issues, and what they had done,” Clement said recently during a timeout at the Marijuana and Business Conference Expo at the Rio. “And what they had done was use marijuana.”

You didn’t have to be high to play quarterback in a short-lived, start-up league founded by pro wrestling czar Vince McMahon that did not protect quarterbacks. But when Carver planted you like a petunia and you separated your shoulder, it literally didn’t hurt, Clement said.

“I tried it. It gave me the ability to get rid of the opiods, to manage (the pain) in a way that wasn’t an addictive scenario,” said the former University of Miami player. “It helped me realize that (medical marijuana use) was not taboo. In the NFL, it still is — had I been in the NFL and tested positive, that certainly would have been the end of me.”

There’s a YouTube video during which Clement talks about breaking Todd Marinovich’s high school passing records while Clement was playing for Mullen High School in Denver. But before you joke about their careers going up in smoke — Marinovich’s substance abuse problems with the NFL’s Raiders are well-documented — one should know that Clement was recruited by Ivy League schools and all three service academies.

He wasn’t your typical pothead quarterback.

Clement, who said he had never smoked marijuana until college — and even then only as a “rite of passage” — returned to Miami after taking that big hit at the Liberty Bowl. He obtained his law degree; he became a government affairs lobbyist back home in Colorado. When legalizing marijuana became a hot button political issue — it’ll be put to vote in Nevada in 2016 — he came off the bench for Mary Jane.

It was a difficult decision, he said, much tougher than leading Miami to a victory over Virginia in the Carquest Bowl.

“It took months to get through my head that this was something I wanted to be, an advocate,” Clement said.

“The fact I have three kids, and my 7-year-old is in second grade, and he’s a little quarterback, and I’m coaching his team — it sent a chill down my spine on how that might affect my kids, when I have to explain it.”

It would sort of be like explaining the human coin toss before an XFL game, when the ball would be tossed between a player from each side, and they would fight for it.

“But I just do not see it as a negative,” Clement said, turning earnest. “This is something that can help when used responsibly. It can be a positive thing.”

It might even be a fantastic business opportunity.

Clement is involved with a project called the Colorado Cannabis Ranch. When he explained it to me at the Rio, it sounded like the Coors brewery in Golden, near where he’s from, only with Cheech Marin serving as host instead of one of the Coors siblings.

He said that was it exactly, except the part about Cheech Marin.

“We’re really excited about it,” Clement said. “We’re going to be the closest dispensary to the Denver International Airport.”

Which could make long flight delays when it snows more tolerable, one supposes.

“A big component of it is the education and awareness and acceptance of marijuana as an adult use platform, and also the medicinal side of it,” Clement said, sounding more like a lobbyist.

He said there also would be an amphitheater at the big weedery by the airport where “we’re going to marry marijuana use with music.”

I started thinking that unlike the XFL’s human coin toss, and unlike He Hate Me, that part already had been done. Think Bob Marley and Bob Dylan and lots of other musicians not named Bob, such as the Rolling Stones.

But it was as if Ryan Clement, the former Outlaw quarterback — “He Advocate Me,” for lack of a better nickname — was reading my mind.

“No, it’s going to be really educational,” he said with clear eyes and a straight face.

LAS VEGAS (KSNV News3LV) – Fifteen years after Nevada voters approved legalizing medical marijuana and three months after the first dispensary opened for business in Las Vegas, patients can now get medicine delivered to their doorstep.

Euphoria Wellness started free home deliveries throughout the Las Vegas Valley early Friday. However, that new service still has competition with illegal delivery services that are often advertised on the Internet.

“When you deal with [those] delivery services, you don’t know what you’re getting,” said Edward Eng, who has had bad experiences with those services before.

“As long as you have your local Nevada resident medical marijuana patient card and a Nevada ID, then you can call us and we can deliver to the address that’s on your patient card,” said Darlene Purdy of Euphoria Wellness.

There are more than 12,000 marijuana card holders in Nevada, with most of them located in Clark County. However, access to medicine varies from patient to patient.
“People that are impaired or confined to a wheelchair or who don’t have a car and are really sick, they should be able to get delivered to,” said Bill Heaton, a medical marijuana patient.

Euphoria Wellness expects to get edible options on the menu within the next couple of weeks.

LAS VEGAS (KSNV News3LV) – Fifteen years after Nevada voters approved legalizing medical marijuana and three months after the first dispensary opened for business in Las Vegas, patients can now get medicine delivered to their doorstep.

Euphoria Wellness started free home deliveries throughout the Las Vegas Valley early Friday. However, that new service still has competition with illegal delivery services that are often advertised on the Internet.

“When you deal with [those] delivery services, you don’t know what you’re getting,” said Edward Eng, who has had bad experiences with those services before.

“As long as you have your local Nevada resident medical marijuana patient card and a Nevada ID, then you can call us and we can deliver to the address that’s on your patient card,” said Darlene Purdy of Euphoria Wellness.

There are more than 12,000 marijuana card holders in Nevada, with most of them located in Clark County. However, access to medicine varies from patient to patient.

“People that are impaired or confined to a wheelchair or who don’t have a car and are really sick, they should be able to get delivered to,” said Bill Heaton, a medical marijuana patient.

Euphoria Wellness expects to get edible options on the menu within the next couple of weeks.

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